The convenient storage and handling of written music has long presented a problem for the professional and amateur musician alike. Full musical arrangements of songs can be obtained in sheet music form, in which each song is printed on paper and arranged similarly to a pamphlet and may be purchased individually. When a large number of musical works have been obtained individually in sheet music form, it becomes difficult to store the music in a neat and orderly manner which will minimize damage to the paper sheets. A further difficulty is encountered with collections of sheet music arrangements in locating a desired arrangement when the collection is large and all of the sheet music is stored together. The musician must devise and keep current his own indexing system to locate a song, or else he must page through the songs, scanning the titles, until the desired song is located. A further and not insignificant disadvantage associated with the use of sheet music is the cost thereof. A musician who obtains songs as the sheet music arrangements thereof are released will encounter a substantial continuing expense if he purchases more than just a few of the current releases.
As an alternative to the purchase of full, individual musical arrangements of songs in sheet music form, many musicians prefer to purchase compilations of a number of songs in a book. These music books, often called fake music books because of the abbreviated arrangements published therein, contain tens or even hundreds of songs, and are substantially less expensive than purchasing individual copies of the songs. The music can be stored more easily, with potentially less damage, in that the hard or the reinforced soft cover bindings used on the books reduce the potential for tearing the music sheets. Locating a desired song is somewhat less cumbersome with music books than with sheet music in that, rather than paging through a large stack of individual songs of sheet music and scanning the titles thereof, the musician need only check the index of various books until the desired song is located. However, this too can be time consuming, particularly when the desired song is not well-known and the collection of music books is extensive.
Further disadvantages exist in collecting compiled musical works in book form. Frequently a music book, particularly one with a large number of different songs, will have a substantial number of songs which the purchaser does not desire to play. It is not uncommon that a musician will purchase a music book having 100 or more songs, while knowing that he will regularly play only ten or fifteen of the songs contained therein. Many popular songs are published in a large number of compiled works, and the musician may have the same or similar arrangements of a song in several different books. Thus, the storage problem encountered with fake music books becomes one of space, since the musician has to store duplicates of desired songs in addition to a large number of undesired musical arrangements.